Weird awareness

[Idec Sdawkminn]

Ever since I was 5 or so, I remember occasionally experiencing a weird sense of awareness. It's not something that happens to me. I consciously initiate it. The first time was when I was probably 5 and sitting in the playroom by myself and looking at a tall and wide bookshelf with a teddy bear sitting on top. I was looking at it and got this odd sense of seeing it in a different way. It still looked the same, just the feeling I got from looking at it changed, like I was much more consciously aware of it.

Ever since then, whenever I think of it (which isn't that often), I can invoke that same feeling. I'll look around at my surroundings and everything will seem more real to me as if I was just seeing them on a TV screen. It's really like I just woke up from the dream that was my whole life before that point and am seeing everything with my awake eyes for the first time. It is kind of an unsettling feeling because it's like my whole life was pointless and fake and everything that mattered to me during it wasn't real and I'm just now starting everything.

When I do this, I try to hold it for as long as I possibly can, but I can only keep it up for 20 seconds at most and I get distracted by things around me and my own thoughts and then I forget about it and I can never get back into it until the next time I think about it.

I just always wondered about it. I've tried explaining it to people and they can never relate. Maybe it is a cognitive process or something I'm tapping into. Or perhaps I'm just ignoring part of my psyche that I normally pay attention to. What do you think?

 

[Lady_X]

i experience something similar...like normally i go through life rarely paying attention and then i stop and record a moment or something...but it's different...it's not the same as when i take pictures...it's like recording this moment...seeing and experiencing the ambiance and the emotion and how everything looked....sometimes i think how very strange that i am here in this exact spot right now...like how weird that the events of my life have lead me to standing right here outside some lil restaurant at night with this person.

i don't know if that's what you mean exactly tho.

 

[Idec Sdawkminn]

Sort of. I don't reflect on how I got there or anything about the past. It's more like, "Wow, I'm really here. I'm really seeing this. This is actually happening."

 

[Mole]

Spontaneous Trances and Designer Trances

What do you think?

It seems like a spontaneous trance with a particular effect.

And just as some of us have spontaneous trances, some of us can design a trance.

We can design a trance for a particular purpose.

And if we are dependent on spontaneous trances, we may give them an interpretation dependent on our particular culture and education.

But if we learn to design our trances, we take our feelings, thoughts and awareness into our own hands.

Otherwise spontaneous trances can seem inexplicable, unrepeatable and weird.

In fact Dennis Wier of About | Trance Research Foundation is able to teach you how to design a trance.

 

[nolla]

I guess I know that feeling too. It's like now I am typing this and I focus somehow differently and I see my hands typing in the dark room as if they were someone elses hands. Like in "Being John Malcovich". But when I do this on purpose it doesn't seem as important as when it just happens. Sometimes there are moments when I get that feeling that it is incredibly odd that I am here and this all is happening, and it is important to just look at it happen.

I think you will find this interesting --> Peak experience - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Coriolis]

i experience something similar...like normally i go through life rarely paying attention and then i stop and record a moment or something...but it's different...it's not the same as when i take pictures...it's like recording this moment...seeing and experiencing the ambiance and the emotion and how everything looked....sometimes i think how very strange that i am here in this exact spot right now...like how weird that the events of my life have lead me to standing right here outside some lil restaurant at night with this person..

I have done what you describe. I can still remember those recorded moments in vivid detail, like a photo album in my head. In the moment of "recording", I could even imagine myself years later replaying them, as I eventually did.

 

[Typology]

I've kind of had the same thing before actually. I don't know if it's the exact same feeling, but I'll occasionally just get this intense emotional feeling that presents itself as a sound almost, and it'll last for no more then a minute and makes me feel like I'm deep in a dream or something, it's weird.

But I can never replicate it, and I only get it on rare occasions.

 

[strychnine]

Well I don't know if this is the same thing, but 99% of the time I feel like I'm living in a dream. On rare occasion I will look at something and realize that it's actually real... or if something sort of dangerous happens. If I almost cross the road on a red light and almost get hit by a car, I'll sort of wake up for about 20 seconds before going back into my dream state.

There is a fuzzy/starry barrier between my brain and the world... like I'm seeing stars until those moments of visual clarity where the stars go away. But I can't engage those moments intentionally as you seem able to.

 

[Saslou]

Sort of. I don't reflect on how I got there or anything about the past. It's more like, "Wow, I'm really here. I'm really seeing this. This is actually happening."

I get this nowadays .. Like i've been woken from my shell .. I see more like my eyes have become sharper, the vivid colours .. The beauty in something so mundane and ordinary .. I FEEL alive .. I AM alive.

I love those moments and appreciate them thoroughly.

Though i still walk into door frames/walls

 

[ThatGirl]

I experience this strange awareness often and for as long as I can remember. Its as though life moves with a certain momentum, then suddenly all the dynamics drop and you are just left with a single product. Things look sharper and you view things for what they really are. Actually I like these moments most the time. Though they are also a bit of a problem in my perception of humanity. Say this happens when I am in observation of people mode. I see them almost "acting" out life. Their quirks and subtle motivations become "loud." It takes some of the magic away in interacting with others.

As you said, once you experience this you can almost control it at will. I prefer to go there when I am alone, or need a quiet place to think. But when I am around people and such, I actually like to ignore it and get caught up in the dynamics.


*Also accompanied are sudden awareness of dynamical shifts. Like I could just be sitting there doing/thinking nothing special and get hit with "Oh fuck, something significant just changed." Very weird.

Hope that doesn't sound psycho!

 

[redacted]

I might experience the same thing, not quite sure. I think of it as a cognitive loop -- I for a moment become detached from the normal sign/signifier relationships we take for granted in communication. It's like an "everything is arbitrary" loop.

 

[ubee0173]

I experience this strange awareness often and for as long as I can remember. Its as though life moves with a certain momentum, then suddenly all the dynamics drop and you are just left with a single product. Things look sharper and you view things for what they really are. Actually I like these moments most the time. Though they are also a bit of a problem in my perception of humanity. Say this happens when I am in observation of people mode. I see them almost "acting" out life. Their quirks and subtle motivations become "loud." It takes some of the magic away in interacting with others.

happens to me all the time, like you can just see through all the bullshit and wonder why the hell everyone is trying so hard. and i do the 'recorded moment' thing- i can still recall random moments from when i was, like, three. but they arent anything poignant. i sort of wish i could channel it to some good use, but its just a Weird Thing that happens instead.

 

[ReflecTcelfeR]

I'd say I have felt something similiar to that. Everything goes into proportion. It's weird. Things seem smaller, I feel distant and I have the strange realization that I actually exist. Not why I exist, but just the fact that I do and I begin to wonder how. Very weird. Perhaps this is just me though.

 

[Idec Sdawkminn]

Nah, the existing thing is for me as well. It reminds me of waking up from the Matrix. Not that I've ever woken up from the Matrix to be able to tell what it is like, but what I'd imagine it would be like.

I've done it while driving on the freeway. Not a good idea. If the traffic suddenly changed, I might not be ready to react.

 

[nolla]

I've done it while driving on the freeway. Not a good idea.

You should have listened to Morpheus. Freeway is a suicide.

 

[Qlip]

Maybe this happens to me. I get a similar feeling when my internal dialog turns off. I stop interacting with the world with an intermediary and experience it directly. Everything becomes more real. I wish I could feel that way all the time. Last time it happened to me I wondered if this is what an S feels like all the time. But, if you have that mode as well, I guess not.

 

[You]

Sounds like when I have sex in the mirror.

 

[Idontcare]

I do the same thing (at least I think it's the same thing) except it's involuntary for me. Usually I will start to think im in a dream or start asking myself really odd questions.. and I will feel almost lifted from reality though im taking everything in. It only lasts about 3 seconds for me.

 

[You]

You ask yourself odd questions during sex?